"H----," said a friend of mine, as he stalked into my sanctum, a few
days after my return, and seated himself at my elbow, as if for a
private and confidential talk, "did Smith really shoot the bear, the
skin of which he brought home, and which he exhibits with such
triumph. Tell me, honestly, as between you and me, did he in fact
shoot him?"
"Smith certainly did shoot that bear," I replied.
"But is the marvellous story he tells about the manner of killing him
really true?"
"That, of course, I cannot tell," I replied, "as I have never heard
the story."
"Why," said my friend, "he tells about a beautiful lake, lying away
back in the northern wilderness, above which Mount Marcy, and Mount
Seward, and other nameless peaks of the Adirondacks, rear their tall
heads to the clouds, throwing back the sunlight in a blaze of glory;
on which the moonbeams lie like a mantle of silver, while away down in
its fathomless depths the stars glow and sparkle, like the sheen of a
million of diamonds. Of the old forests and trees of fabulous growth,
stretching away and away on every hand, throwing their sombre shadows
far out over the water, in whose tangled recesses countless deer and
moose, and panthers, and bears range, and among whose branches birds
of unknown melody carol. That one side of this beautiful lake is
palisadoed by a wall of rocks, stand straight up sixty feet high, near
the top of which is a shelf or narrow pathway, along which two men can
scarcely walk abreast.
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